Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 66997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
She winks.
That was just so much information at once I can barely exhale. I stare her down. “First off, that was…a lot this early even with caffeine.” She winces. “Second,” I grin. “Thank you for the snack and soy cream cheese tastes good.” Lie, it’s horrible, but it fits the image of perfection I started back when everything happened to keep my mom off my back. I need to keep, a list of foods was also necessary to keep up the lie. Gone is the girl who likes fries and ketchup. Enter in organic Kimchi, kale, and soy. I hate that part of the lie the most. Can’t change it though and it’s easy to remember I’m vegan, plus when I smell fast food I think of him. And only him. It’s the only excuse that keeps me safe from the nightmares, from his crooked smile and annoyingly taunting eyes and from every single place he’d haunt if he was here or still alive. “Second, wait was I already on second, sorry third,” I yawn. “The Dean’s list is a myth in order to keep professors from sleeping with their students and you know it.” Clever though. Most people were so petrified of being found out that they kept it in their pants for the most part. Nobody wants to get kicked out of Brighton.
Every school has urban myths, rumors, this one is ours. They warn you about it when you enroll and you thank God when you graduate without being on it. Some say it goes back to the school being founded by catholic nuns, others say it’s a ledger that has information on underground gambling, either way. It’s one of the many things that make the school unique—other than our incredible observatory and fetish for lacrosse instead of football.
She levels me with a concerned stare. “The Dean’s List doesn’t exist until you end up on it and your entire social life and future is killed, remember Professor Sanders?”
I frown trying to remember his lore. “He got divorced. Divorce happens.”
She shakes her head. “Yeah, and a year later, Stephanie Reynolds had his twins.”
I wince. “She was his TA, hardly a crime, and they weren’t his remember.” But I know it goes deeper than that, because I know that everything and everyone has an origin story. I would know that better than anyone on this campus. Sadly.
“He was literally teaching here from Shanghai,” she points out. “Stephanie’s twins are adorable; they also lack every single one of her Irish features. The math isn’t hard, bro. But props to her because that man was fiiiine, could C drama his way into any of my historical fantasies I wouldn’t be mad at his sword play… Sorry, I’ll stop. It’s just so hard once I get going, you know?”
I laugh. “Yeah, it’s why I keep you around, so I don’t have to talk so much and because you fill the world with your wise words of swordplay and silver foxes, now, let me stress out in peace.”
She walks farther into the room. Well, it’s more of a shuffle than a walk. “I’ll just set this here. Show your tits—you never know, might help more than your brains. Not that we’re against brains, we just believe in using every tool in our arsenal. Women. Rawr. I’ve said too much again.” She yawns dramatically. “I think I need a power nap after all that.”
Her. A nap. Really? Does she even know what that word means?
“Love you,” she adds, backing toward the door. “Also, red’s a lucky color and it means power, so… wear it.”
“I feel like red resembles more of my inner rage,” I call after her. “And it’s Evans, I’ll get an A.”
She ignores me. “Manifest your good luck!” she shouts back. “I am, and it’s the only advice my mom gave me before college—other than don’t come back if you get B’s.”
I smirk despite myself. It took me watching her mom chase her around with a shoe one time to decide we should be friends. Well that, and her clever way of hiding behind me so her mom couldn’t hit her.
“Fine. Red socks,” I finally grumble staring down at my bare feet. “Happy?”
“Thatta girl!” she calls. “I’m gonna shower now that my moment with Nespresso has passed. Knock ’em dead, Lilah.”
The door clicks shut.
She has no idea what that last sentence does to me.
What it pulls from the shadows.
His voice.
Low. Rough. Right against my ear.
“Knock ’em dead, beautiful.”
A pause.
A breath.
“Take their souls… the way you’ve taken mine. Love is like that, Delilah, it’s a taker, and if you don’t offer it up, then like the Grim Reaper, it will follow you to death until you sacrifice it on its altar. Love, just like death, rarely plays fair, that’s the kind of love I have for you.”